IT’S cool to be a Jack of all trade even if you can’t be a master of one. Now that things can be learned at home or with the convenience of portable devices such as smart phones and laptops, one can be guided with numerous tasks and applications on how to do things.
However, it really pays to be observant at how things are done whenever there are opportunities to be with the different work forces like carpenters, plumbers, electricians and even farmers or gardeners doing their tasks.
I once sewed a pair of pants and an upper garment using my mother’s sewing machine for our high school elective subject and I can still recall how to measure my waist, hips, tights, knee and floor for a paper pattern layout. The cut pattern is then traced on a cloth using an orange tailor’s fabric marker and I recently found on the web that the measurement and sewing process is excellently explained with step-by-step illustrations.
Other do-it-your-self or DIYs from complicated home improvement projects to simple fixes in plumbing and home gardening are available online with step-by-step illustrations and video and as long as it helps the user perform the needed task, I see this as form of self-help that can also mean saving hard earned money. As an artist, I’ve dreamt of doing a stained glass or mosaic art and whenever I visit churches, I always look and observe how such old form of art made of cut colored glass and glazed tile are pieced together to form an impressive work.
Thanks to newer methods that I have seen not only from the web but also from closer scrutiny of several churches, I am now bent on doing a project that looks like a stained glass but it is actually made of welded strips of metal layered with sheets of colored resin that looks like pieces of cut glass.
Thanks to newer technologies, I no longer need a metal pipe threader and lead pipes to do plumbing as PVC tubes has replaced it with easier connectivity with chemical solvents. I also replaced my heavy welding machine with a portable home outlet pluggable inverter type that consumes lesser electric power.
Yes, I’ve been doing home carpentry that includes plumbing, masonry and wiring my wife feels happier now that I added a pump to our two water tanks for the pressure requirements of our faucets and showers that gravity fails to give.
We used to engage in scrap buy-and-sell business and I often accompany our truck including rented ones to deliver bales of scrap paper and recyclable plastic to factories in Novaliches and Bulacan. As a keen observer, I learned that it takes a good welder to fix or reconnect a broken truck axle, that cylindrical piece of hard metal connected to the wheel that gets the rotating motion from the differential and engine.
In the field of mass media and the various tasks performed by journalists and talents in the production of television programs and movies, these are now being done by individuals or netizens who did not really study formal mass communication related courses. My eldest daughter who finished a BSN course managed to produce a video segment of their school’s outreach program that they used as part of their terminal report. She captured moving images using her camcorder that uses a DV tape and I helped her convert their takes into a digital video file.
Using a computer based non-linear editing program like Movie maker, she managed to finish their audio-visual presentation complete with a narration and musical background. It is amazing how we notice younger people or those we refer to as millennials or digital natives come up with their trending social media uploads.
For several occasions, I was interviewed by a team of students taking up tourism, nursing, architecture and education and they came complete with the needed gadgets which are usually, a digital single lens reflex or DSLR camera, a smartphone and a portable tripod.
With free movie-making software, these students can already download and assemble edit their takes that we once refer to as footages during out indie-filmmaking days where we 16mm and 8mm films.
Now that cinemas are reaching our homes with YouTube and Netflix, our cheaper and better smart television systems serves not only as our home entertainment portal but it has actually become our virtual classroom that we learn many things from.